What Does Ezekiel 45:14 Mean?
Concerning the statutes of oil, the bath of oil, you shall offer a tenth of a bath from the cor, which is a heap of ten baths, for ten baths are a heap.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Concerning the ordinance of oil, the bath of oil, ye shall offer the tenth part of a bath out of the cor, which is an homer of ten baths; for ten baths are an homer:THE KEY
The oil’s share is given a boundary you can count: a tenth of a bath set against a cor measured as ten baths.
THE MEANING
The oil portion is one tenth of a bath for each cor, which is also called a homer and defined here as ten baths. The share has a stated measure and a named place within the whole.
THE ROOT
חֹק
ḥoq
GROWS FROM
חקק
ḥ-q-q
To cut or inscribe; by extension, to prescribe or mark out a fixed boundary.
“statutes” in this verse is ḥoq. חֹק (ḥoq, ordinance or prescribed portion) can mean an appointed share as well as a decree. Its root evokes something marked out, so the oil’s portion is not an abstract rule: the verse gives that boundary a countable measure.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāqaq: To inscribe, cut in, or decree.
חָקַק
The act of marking something out illuminates how the ordinance defines the oil’s share.
ḥuqqāh: A statute or prescribed ordinance.
חֻקָּה
This related form keeps the sense of a set prescription that gives an amount a defined place.
עֲשִׂרִית
ʿăśîrît
GROWS FROM
עשר
ʿ-ś-r
Ten; the word family builds measures and portions from this count.
The tenth part remains linguistically tied to ten, and the verse repeats ten in defining the cor as ten baths. The share and the whole are expressed through the same countable measure.
ALSO GROWS
ʿeśer: Ten.
עֶשֶׂר
It supplies the number at the heart of the tenth part and the cor’s ten-bath measure.
maʿăśēr: A tithe or tenth.
מַעֲשֵׂר
This related word carries the same ten-root into the language of a set share.
THE PATTERN
A share becomes accountable when its measure is clearly named against the whole.
But you shall have a whole and aligned stone, and a whole and aligned measure, that your days may be lengthened in the land which the LORD your God gives you.Scales of deceit are an abomination to the LORD, but a whole stone is his delight.On the first day of the week, let each of you lay something by at his own side, storing it up, as his way has gone well for him, so that no gatherings are made when I come.THE THREAD
And all the tenth of the land, whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the tree, is the LORD's; it is set apart to the LORD.The word rendered “tithe” is מַעֲשֵׂר (maʿăśēr, a tenth), from עשר (ʿ-ś-r, ten), the same root as עֲשִׂרִית (ʿăśîrît, tenth part) here. That shared root opens Ezekiel’s oil allotment as a counted share with a defined measure.
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